The Yakuza games are beloved, open-world brawlers where you can do an enormous variety of activities from Japanese daily life. Including befriending women and getting them to send you ‘private movies’, in the upcoming game. But this isn’t just any vaguely embarrassing and asinine touch!

In-game camgirls would be pretty bad by itself, but this is Sega! They took the can’t-miss concept of fighting Xenomorphs and made it into Aliens: Colonial Marines! There’s nothing, no matter how terrible, they can’t make worse.

Specifically, right now the pervs who will immediately try to unlock this option are being asked to vote for which of the one hundred porn stars Sega has chosen that they want in the game. Hey, that’s how you engage your audience, ask them which actress they’d like to pretend they’re talking to on the Internet and paying for virtual videos of. Kotaku notes that the Japanese public has not received this idea at all well, calling it creepy, so you wonder why Sega bothered.

It’s also embarrassing and more than a little condescending. What, Sega, you think we wouldn’t buy this game without boobies? The chance to punch digital people isn’t enough? The game has featured bits like visiting a hostess in the past, but those were relatively tame and at least in line with the game’s mission of simulating what being in Tokyo is actually like.

This game is unlikely to see a Western release, partially because Sega knows exactly how Fox News would react to the idea of a virtual character pulling his virtual kite string to virtual videos. But it’s still going to be one of those things that linger like an offensive stench over the entire hobby, and it’s a black eye to a publisher who really doesn’t have the reputation to spare.

On the other hand, at least now those of us who were hopeful that Sega might somehow turn it around, get with the program, and become a modern publisher can move on with our lives. Anybody for a round of ‘Let It Go?’

Join The Discussion

You can spend countless hours in the strip club getting lap dances and seeing pixel boobs in GTAV and no one complains except for a vocal Catholic minority, so why the SHOCK and scorn for Yakuza doing something similar?